Non-Arab
and/or non-Muslims in the "Arab" world

One key element missing from the discussion
is the question of non-Arab and/or non-Muslims in the "Arab" world.
The Arab nationalists have succeeded in establishing some 23 non-democratic,
ethnically (Arab) and religiously (Islam) defined nation-states in over
1 million square miles of territory, often at the expense of non-Arabs,
such as the Kurds (Muslims, non-Arabs), Assyrians (Christians, non-Arabs),
Copts (Christians, non-Arabs), southern Sudanese (Christian and pagan non-Arabs),
Maronite Lebanese (Christian and mostly identified with their Phoenician
ancestors) and Mizrahi Jews. Arab nationalist ideology claims all
this territory exclusively as "Arab" despite the legitimate claims of non-Arabs
and/or non-Muslims to ancient homelands long ago arabized with the spread
of Islam, often through conquest.

I believe that the Arab opposition to the
existence of non-Arab, non-Muslim Israel is based on the ideological motivations
which led to the persecution of non-Arab minorities. The Assyrians
suffered massacre and expulsion by the Arab nationalists of Iraq in the
1920s and 1930s. The Kurds have been persecuted and have suffered
terribly for their struggle to establish an independent Kurdistan (at the
hands of the Turks and Iranians as well, but that is another story.)

Arab nationalist ideology, and its Islamicist
couterpart, cannot and will not tolerate non-Arab and non-Islamic peoples
organizing themselves into their own independent nation states. Indeed,
I have seen on Islamicist web sites the goal of "regaining" Spain in the
name of Islam.

I believe that we need to place Israel's
struggle to survive into this context. Any non-Arab/non-Islamic state
in the region must rely on strength (political, moral, spiritual and military)
if it wants to survive in the Middle East. In this context can we
thus place Israel's demand for security. It is not security for the
sake of security, not seucirty for the sake of oppressing another people,
but security for the sake of survival against two racist and exclusivist
ideologies (Arabism and Islamicism) which have succeeded in repressing
the just struggles for national self-determination of most non-Arab peoples
in the Middle East.